OR, COMPOSITION AND DELIVERY OF SERMONS. BY HENRY J. RIPLEY, PROFESSOR OF SACRED RHETORIC AND PASTORAL DUTIES IN THE NEWTON TO WHICH ARE ADDED HINTS ON EXTEMPORANEOUS PREACHING, BY HENRY WARE, JR., D. D. BOSTON: GOULD, KENDALL AND LINCOLN, 59 WASHINGTON STREET. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. PREFACE. A REMEMBRANCE of my early wants, and a regard to the natural action of the mind in composing sermons, led to the preparation of the following work. Without detracting from the substantial merits of existing works on preaching, I may just mention two particulars in which they have appeared to me deficient. They do not contemplate the actual position of a man who undertakes to compose a sermon; and, consequently, they do not unfold the process through which his mind ought to pass. In other words, they contemplate a sermon, as composed; not the man, as preparing to compose, and as actually composing, a sermon. This remark presents the idea on which a chief part of the following work is built, and which is also employed by Gresley in his Treatise on Preaching. 1* For this idea I am as much indebted to Cicero and Quinctilian, as to my own experience: probably, more; for nature has not sufficient play in many of our studies; and however ready she may be to indicate the proper startingpoint, some of us need more than a hint, from other quarters, in order to accept her guidance. The other particular alluded to, is, that in some valuable works on this subject a student is left without a proper view, and without proper specimens, of sermons commonly denominated textual. Now, however superior are sermons which are marked by unity of subject—and the following pages will bear testimony to a high valuation of them on my part-the experience of the pulpit, and the mental constitution and habits of large masses of hearers, and of many preachers, clearly show that textual sermons are not to be dispensed with. Much space is not required for instructions on such sermons; still, a practical view of them is evidently desirable. Though I have intimated that existing works do not meet the wants which I have felt as a teacher, yet I have not the presumption to suppose that every want of teachers, or of young ministers, will be met by the present volume. Indeed, on the subject of preaching, the range for |